Maybe they're really good-hearted. Or maybe it's just good PR. Either way, who cares?

Of course, since it's in private hands, they can SAY they're going to conserve it, and then strip mine it all the way to the mantle if they want to, and nobody can stop them, if it turns out to have some kind of rare earth down deep later on.

I am betting there will be some kind of carbon credit scheme coming from this......it's like the Darkwoods conservancy nearby here which is an area that has been timber-pigged valley to alpine that they are selling carbon credits for.....

I live 5 miles and 2000' above the Teck metallurgical operations in Trail BC, they are pretty decent with their pollution control and their e-waste recycling is admirable....that said they are still driven by money and profits first and foremost....so as far as conservation goes.....

A lot of the time when you need to get permitting to do mining on public land you have to get a permit which contains mitigation requirements. If the project is on land that has already been put aside for conservation purposes, like habitat for an endangered species, then those mitigation requirements will often require the mining company to compensate two acres for every acre destroyed.

New Age Redneck:I am betting there will be some kind of carbon credit scheme coming from this......it's like the Darkwoods conservancy nearby here which is an area that has been timber-pigged valley to alpine that they are selling carbon credits for.....

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I live 5 miles and 2000' above the Teck metallurgical operations in Trail BC, they are pretty decent with their pollution control and their e-waste recycling is admirable....that said they are still driven by money and profits first and foremost....so as far as conservation goes.....

I did a summer stint at Teck-Cominco's R&D branch. They were trying to develop a refining method that didn't involve smelters belching acid rain. I don't know if the NDA I signed is still valid, but the basics were on their website. From what I saw, the byproducts were water vapour and a metric ass-tonne of iron-laced gypsum. The goal was to put the refinery on the mountain and avoid shipping raw ore that was 98% by mass worthless not-metal.

SomeoneDumb:Maybe they're buying it to preserve it now, but can't that sort of thing change pretty quickly once they own it? A new CEO, new board, new discoveries can easily change a company's mind or plans.

I guess it's good for now. I'm just not so sure about long term.

The only trust I have for land stewardship is the public trust (and often not even that). Hopefully they will prove me wrong; GNP is in my top five favorite places of all time now.

100 Watt Walrus:They'll just wait a couple decades until the glaciers are gone and nobody wants anything to do with the gray, boulder-littered valleys left behind, and they'll have free reign.

/didn't put a lot of thought into that one, just popped into my cynical head

Glacier National Park is named so because it is glacially carved landscape, NOT because of the glaciers (which are in deed melting). Spent five days there in 2011, wish it had been more like a month (or well, forever). It was gorgeous and will likely remain so longer than any of us are alive.

1. OK, good2. 28 million acres sounds like a lot, but they're paying less than a dollar an acre3. "not amenable to mining" explains why they won't be mining on it4. They're spending $18 million on PR, which is chump change5. Are there hard guarantees that they won't come up with some other "anything for a quick buck" to fark up the land? Just buy the land and transfer the title to the government, with the deal being that it is national reserve